The Darkest Knight: Road Trippin'

"Oh trust me, Dick, I was the first person to notice." Karmy stood up with a stretch. "But hey, if I could convince her to quit being Slade's apprentice, not to sound conceided or anything, then maybe hopefully, I can convince her to come on this Road Trip." she started to head up to Alice's room. "The Insomnio's should be here withen the hour, they'll be in the back so just keep an eye out." she called out to him before bounding up the stairs. By the time she reached Alice's bedroom door, she was a little winded. She just used to portal everywhere and now, stairs?! Karmy didn't like stairs now. "I need to start running again.." she mumbled to herself as she knocked on the door.

"I told you! Dick called to Karmy, "This isn't a vacation!"

Alice didnt answer the door. Silence. Door locked.

"Road trip isn't the same as vacation Dick!" Karmy called down to him. "Trust me, I know!" she waited patiently but she didn't hear Alice unlock the door. "Aliceeee..." Karmy talked through the door. "I know you're in there. C'mon, I just wanna talk.." still no answer. She continued this for a few more minutes, but still, nothing. "Fine, now I'm gonna have to scale the wall to get through your window." and she ran downstairs. All was quiet in the room and Alice could hear Karmy trying to climb up to her room. Then once again, silence. A soft knocking came at the door again. "Alice, can we please talk?"

"Have you considered that she might be asleep?" Dick asked truthfully. "I mean she could have just fallen asleep recently."

"I don't think so, Dick.." Karmy was becoming a tad desparate now, nearly banging on the door. But she didn't want to scare Alice into not coming or something like that so she didn't scream or yell. "C'mon Alice, I know you can hear me. Please open up." she talked through the door, still knocking loudly.

Alice turned in her bed and looked down at the door. She was wondering why she was knocking at the door and not portaling in like she often rudely does. "What do you want?" Alice asked turning back in her bed and pushing her face in her pillow.

"Besides wanting to say hi to my best buddy, I was gonna tell you that Ivy, Zero, Luna, Sissy, Crimson and me just got our asses handed to us by Drain-O and we lost our powers to him." Karmy told her through the dooor. "Now the fat head wants us to go to Hawaii so we can get them back."

For a long time there was a silence, pure quiet. Alice finally opened the door in which Karmy was leaning on. "He took your powers?" Alice asked, her hands gripping onto her wheelchair tightly. "How did he do that? And who the hell is Drain-O?"

Karmy stumbled and fell flat on her face. "Ok, why is that happening a lot today?" she asked as she rolled over, nose trickling with blood. "And yeah, he took our powers, see?" she snapped her fingers but nothing happened again. "Which is why my eyes aren't changing either. Whoever he is, he used this weird ray gun thingymajiger. When we woke up, our powers were gone." she sat up and rested against Alices wheelchair.

Cassius returned the handshake. "The pleasure is mine." He said back, but his voice was borderline threatening, carrying the traditional overprotective 'I will end you' tone "You must be Robert, hm?" he asked Robert in return.

After mentally bawling his eye's out at Cassius' vice like handshake, Robert stuffed his more or likely busted hand into his pockets. "Yes sir, that's me, Robert Axel Bay." he responded. "So, how can I help you sir? I was about to go in to see Karmy cause I heard that the battle had gone awry and I got really worried about her and the other heroes." he was treading as lightly as possible, dead scared that the very large man in front of him would snap his neck.

Cassius's initial impression was that he was going to like this kid- two years ago he enjoyed scaring cops, and little had frankly changed. He was about to make up another way he could scare Robert when he heard about the heroes and a battle. "Battle?" He hoisted Robert up by the back of his shirt and held him up eye level. "What battle, what happened?" He asked, notably worried. Zero had only told him to hurry up and come over, he never mentioned a fight....

Alice looked at Karmy, almost unamused with those dead eyes of hers. "It must be some sort of supernatural phenomenon, there's no such thing as technology or any physical laws of science in which something can generate enough force to suck only your metaphysical potentials and not your natural somatic abilities. Most likely he has some mystical weapon and it can be recreated by some other magician so you can reacquire your paranormal powers. I'm sure they're out there. I really don't see a reason to go on a road trip with you to fight one bad guy. Plus, what would I contribute to the cause?" Alice asked ever so graciously pushing Karmy off her chair. "Really... what do you need a cripple for anyway?"

Karmy just lay on the floor where Alice pushed her, confused out of her mind. "What the.. I don't... What about apples? I don't wanna suck on apples..." she felt really hurt by Alice's big vocabulary, as if she was making fun of her lack of education. "Dude, I can't even read a dictionary, I have no idea how I'm supposed to understand any of that. And dude, that dude has like, all of our powers at once. We have to get them back."

Robert kept a straight face, though, inside his mind he was screaming bloody murder. "Well yeah, I heard about it through work, and Bard and I were taking care of some of the henchmen along with a rouge cop." he said, scratching the back of his head. "Karmy told me that something bad happened and I raced over here..."

Alice narrowed her eyes. She had to dumb down her vocabulary with Karmy if she was going to have a normal conversation with her. Sometimes she couldn't catch herself using big or complicated words. "What's he going to do? He doesn't know how to use your powers as well as you do." Alice sighed, and not smiling, but stretching her lips across her face.

"Exactly, Al." Karmy sat up and looked at Alice's strange facial expression with a confused look of her own. "Think about it. An outta control psychopathetic villain with six different superpowers in his hands, none of which he knows how to use! That's like, disastrous if I've ever heard it... I could think of all the things that could go wrong with my powers, especially if he tries space portals. I can't even imagine how bad it would be if he screwed up using everyone elses... Or hell, what if he combines them at once? All hell could break lose, literally."

Alice nodded, her face resembled that of the famous expression that the CGI cartoon Marlin from Finding Nemo. "True, but what am I going to do about it? I can't fight any of my own battles anymore Karmy." Alice sighed.

Karmy, who had gotten a little obsessed with the movie Finding Nemo, had been watching the animation at least once a day for the past few weeks, sometimes losing a little sleep so she could watch it. So, she felt like using a a quote from the movie, thinking that maybe it would cheer Alice up. Look up straight into Alice's eyes, Karmy said this: "Hey there, Mr. Grumpy Gills. When life gets you down do you wanna know what you've gotta do? " then she started doing a little dance while she was lying down, wiggling all about on the hard wood. "Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. What do we do? We swim" and on and on she went.

"Karmy." Alice said, unamused as ever. "Karmy, stop singing." She kept going. "Karmy stop." Singing. "Karmy! I can't swim if you haven't noticed." She seethed displaying her legs, unmoving, and stiff with atrophy.

Realizing her mistake, Karmy stopping mid swim and facepalmed. "Oh... crap..." a wave of horrible guilt and embarrassment washed over her. She had probably just made things much worse.

Alice sighed at Karmy's reactions, she knew she was being a jerk and as of late there really wasn't anything she could make up for it, Karmy looked sad, probably more sad than she did herself. Maybe not, but still Alice knew she was causing it. She threw hands up in capitulation. "Okay, okay. God. When are we leaving?" Alice asked, more annoyed than eager.

Karmy jumped up, threw her arms up into the air and yelled, "Victory!" though it didn't seem like that much of one to others, it was for Karmy. She had spent the last month trying to get a response out of her friend, and finally, she won one. That made her happy. She hugged Alice and whispered, "Thank you, Alice." before standing back up. "I guess whenever the Insomnios get here. Caspian is letting us borrow his VW. He should be here soon-" at that moment, a car horn blared from outside the mansion. "They're here!!" Karmy shouted excitedly, jumping up and down like a rabbit on coffee. Nothing made her happier than seeing the Insomnio's, and she bounded downstairs to greet them.

It took sarah a second to recognize Nicole was talking to her. All the new sensations of being a human again- they dominated her mind in their entirety. The little things people took for granted, not like, having organs and such- the clothing on her skin, having actual toes as oposed to a metalic shoe- ish thing, not having tubes coming out of the back of her head.... it was all so new to her. It was like she had been blind and could suddenly see or deaf and could finally hear.

But she DID hear Nicole. "Oh, uhm, I'm fine. It's just...... so new to me." She replied to nicole. They had kept in touch a little off and on over the past few months, and as such were steadily becoming good friends

"Well, I guess I am....." Cy replied, but her reluctance couldn't go unnoticed- she was human now. Honest to god flesh and blood in place of chrome and microchips. Did she really want to hop in a cramped up van on christmans to just loose what might've been her best present ever....? "What about you, coming?"

Ivy had done nothing but brush off Zero's concerns and feel like utter crap since they got to Wayne Manor. She chalked it up to a cold- she had suspected she'd catch one sooner or later, thanks to the weather. That had to be it. It didn't have anything to do with losing her powers, or else everyone would be feeling sick.

Right?

"Coming, Karm." She croaked, standing on wobbly legs and practically leaning on Zero. She had already disclosed the cold theory to him.